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NEAR Lives On; Balloon Doesn't
Rix writes "CNN has another story about NEAR. Apparently, they've extended the mission again - until Feb 28th - to gather even more data. They also have a simulation of NEAR's descent. Unfortunately in QT, so I can't comment on it." And a short update to the balloon story posted just few hours ago: it popped.
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There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Already Japanese companies are interested, and many have asteroid mining as part of their 100 plans (Japanese companies plan far into the future, unlike western capaitalist companies). Here in the west our companies do not plan beyond the next shareholder AGM, generally speaking, and so our government has to take the lead in making long term plans for our society.
I congratulate NASA and the government for the foresight they are showing here. It is vital that the USA get a good place in the biggest resource bonanza of the 21st century. Vital for our future.
My only quibble is with them making the results of this mission public, and the data available to all. Would the Chinese do it? No. The Japanese? No. Only the idealistic Americans. We need to close the lid on this, for it is needed for our future in the face of our competitors.
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Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
Big as a football field, it would have been... gee... how metaphorical of the XFL
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
<parent>aww, never mind dear, we'll get you another one. comforts small child At least it didn't go floating off, eh? What one would you like this time? Winnie the Pooh?
<child>sobbing I wanted that one
<parent>It was a complete rip off. It said it was "ultra long duration". And it was far too big. I don't know how we were meant to take it on the bus home being the size of a football field. Jolly impracticle altogether if you ask me...
<child>still sobbing Its not fair...
<parent>I'm sorry dear, I don't know what NASA were thinking by making it. How about a normal size one next time eh?
I think most posters so far have been overly harsh; this isn't a catastrophic failure on the level of the Mars projects. There's nothing in the article that says the balloon can't be patched, reinforced, and reinflated. If it had popped into a million pieces, that would be something else (Tripping the Rift comes to mind).
+1 bonus to whoever identifies the subject first. (Just kidding about the +1 part.)
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Let's see. Mass of EROS = 7.2 million billion kilograms. Mass of NEAR = 805 kg (includes propellant). Propulsion capabilities of NEAR = 100-lb thruster. Speed of impact = 4 mph (1.9 meters per second).
So. A 4mph collision between a big thing, and a thing with a mass of 0.00000000001118% or less of the big thing. Total effect: somewhat slight.
Risk assessment: "We might get some asshole debating whether the impact might throw EROS off course ... other than that, seems safe enough"
Okay. How about a version that's in AVI format (2.4 Megs). Or maybe just the raw images (24 Megs) directly.
-Sean
It turns out that a pumpkin-shaped balloon, with strong cords in the seams of the pumpkin, does a much better job of resisting pressure for a given overall weight of balloon. Each gore between the ribs sees only the stress for a spherical balloon more or less the diameter of the space between the ribs, not the diameter of the whole big balloon.
What struck me was how the Greeks still influenced me thousands of years later with their ideas of 'perfect' shapes.
And, of course, this balloon didn't 'pop', it leaked...I'm sure that they'll get that fixed and try again; it's too good an idea to abandon.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
In case you want another source and forget about space.com Here is their coverage.
Heidi Wall wrote:
This is the kind of spasce mission that NASA should do more of. This mission was essentially all about prospecting - going out to check out the asteroids and see what resources they have for us to rape and use for our own ends. [...] it is clear that the only possible reason anyone other than a scientist could be interested in an asteroid is for the resources that it contains.
Well, I agree there should be more exploration of the asteroids. Prospecting, however, is just a very-long-term (very very long term) upside from a mission such as NEAR. The mission objective has much more to do with planetology and cosmology -- the origins of the solar system -- than it does with asteroid mining. (For one thing, we don't really need to send a vehicle to a body to find out whether it has metal or not.)
Already Japanese companies are interested, and many have asteroid mining as part of their 100 plans (Japanese companies plan far into the future, unlike western capaitalist companies). Here in the west our companies do not plan beyond the next shareholder AGM, generally speaking, and so our government has to take the lead in making long term plans for our society.
Not even the government, really. Although this mission is not, as I noted above, an example with much relevance to commercial exploitation, the planning that you speak of does take place in academia and in many R&D think tanks that are collaborations between industry and academia. NASA has been singularly unsuccessful in helping "commercialize" space, and most experts today would prefer that they stick to science and long-term R&D.
I congratulate NASA and the government for the foresight they are showing here. It is vital that the USA get a good place in the biggest resource bonanza of the 21st century. Vital for our future.
Again, you don't seem to have a grasp of the relevance of this mission. We don't need a probe to tell us there are resources out there. What we do need is cheap access to space, and the right economic conditions. For instance, resource substitution remains a much more economical approach than asteroid mining for the forseeable future.
My only quibble is with them making the results of this mission public, and the data available to all. Would the Chinese do it? No. The Japanese? No. Only the idealistic Americans. We need to close the lid on this, for it is needed for our future in the face of our competitors.
Ridiculous. YOu don't have the slightest understanding of how the scientific community works, which casts into doubt everythign else you've said. Japanese research by their space agency is made public. A lot of Chinese research is made public as well. We have an excellent history of scientific cooperation with the Japanese; your xenophobia seems to have bounced through a time warp from 1979 or something, and is very prejudiced as well. Do Americans have a monopoly on idealism? Do the Chinese have a monopoly on secrecy? Good grief.
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lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
That has to be the one thing I hate the most about proof-of-concept flights being extremely publicized - after all, this is the flight that we want to fail, if any of them, so that we can figure out exactly how the failure happened and correct it with no major science loss.
Granted, it was probably just balloon failure, and those you expect to happen a few percent of the time (or less, probably). All this basically has done is probably lowered spirits on the ULDB team- that's why I find it really harsh that we criticize NASA for the idea. They're feeling bad enough already, even though it was completely out of their hands.
It does kindof make you yearn for the days when proof-of-concept ideas were done in secret in military bases, and when things blew up, no one cared. You really look perfect when no one sees your mistakes.
Dead wrong.
Pressure = height of fluid above x its density x acceleration due to gravity. As a balloon rises, the pressure outside decreases. Most balloons expand as they rise, so that they stay at the same pressure as the outside air. (Because remember, PV/T = constant.)
Its no fun responding to trolls in the hope of giving them some education, maybe...
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
As a balloon rises in the atmosphere, more and more pressure is placed on it.
>Dead wrong.
As the outside pressure drops, the balloon will expand, due to constant internal pressure not being conterbalanced by external pressure. Try putting a balloon in a vacuum chamber (it'll pop). So don't browbeat the kid.
Now, that said, I highly doubt that's what actually happened - the story said that the balloon was designed to inflate to its full size when it reached its destination altitude.
I wish people would stop being so critical when NASA doesn't succeed. They're trying things that've never been done before, of course things are going to break some of the time.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland